which got him elected after all. saying, this is my wish list, this is in a perfect world, this is what i would do. i don't think anyone at the white house expected the republicans to say, oh, thank you mr. president, yes, this looks lovely. let's go on and work on a deal. no, that's not what it was. the white house -- this is alfonse gaston a little bit here. and so they're waiting for the republican response. and what they're really talking about, brooke, is getting some kind of a first step. a down payment. ironically they all know what -- in the big picture needs to be done. they know you have to fix entitlements, do something on the tax side, but they're trying to figure out how to get from here to there. >> and let's just stop there, because let's say the white house now presented a here. how long do we have to wait for the republicans to come forward with the there? >> well, i think what we're going to end up with probably is a smaller here that gets us to something that they're going to need to work on in the